A Translation Project Report Of Cultural Odyssey

It was a popularity of translating prose in the midst of1960s and1970s, duringwhich famous translators and scholars like Zhang Peiji, Shen Weidong and Liu Shicongput their heart and soul in making attempts to do theirs bits in exploring ways totranslate prose and even Baihuawen by Mr. Lu Xun. They introduced a number ofmethods and techniques and summarized not a few theories. Besides, they added newcriterion to that of Mr. Yan Fu, particularly a theory of picturesque was put forward byMr. Qian Zhongshu. The source text of this paper is a selection from Yu Qiuyu’sCultural Odyssey; specifically the preface, two chapters (Taoist Tower and DujiangDam). The main focus is on handling grammatical words from Chinese into English,which is neglected by many translators; a great deal of energy was spent in trying outthose methods and techniques.In order to level off the quality of translation and realize certain goals, the authorhas learnt some background knowledge of Yu Qiuyu and his writing style of many otherworks and analyzed the content of source text. Having made a reference to boldinnovation of masters in translating other prose, the author broke away from thetraditional ways in prose translation but paid more attention to culture and custom oftarget language and thinking mode of possible readers. Tender care was given totranslation of grammatical words and there were a variety of ways in choosing properwords. By combining effective translation methods and techniques, the author alsomade full use of aesthetics in converting words so as to achieve a sense of beauty inwriting style and sound feeling. At the end of the report, it laid out the lesson learntfrom practice; meanwhile unsolved problems in literature translation have been listed.